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Our electricity infrastructure of power transformers, substations and transmission lines is old and failing. A stimulus package to upgrade our grid would pay for itself in five years and create about four million jobs. Source: DOE OEDER

Yes, you heard me right. Another Stimulus. With new technologies rising faster than sea level on a hot planet, America is headed for the biggest energy boom in 60 years. But we’re also headed for a big disappointment if we don’t have another stimulus package that will allow us to take advantage of this wealth of energy.

With more natural gas and uranium than we need for a thousand years, new and better solar cells, new biofuel technologies to replace ethanol, and even more oil than we thought we had, the source of energy isn’t the problem for our future. It’s how we capture it and move it around the country.

We are all expecting this energy boom to be the spark that sets our economy on fire for the next generation. The recent increase in natural gas is saving Americans about $100 billion a year.

But this boom will not happen without a new stimulus package for infrastructure and energy. Without it, the energy boom will flow out of our leaky grid like oil from a bad cement-job.

We demand the latest military hardware. We demand the latest technology in our cars and our iPhones. But when it comes to the lifeblood of our economy, electricity, we accept an outdated 1950s decaying electrical grid that leaks half of our electricity to the ether and is falling apart faster than we can repair it.

Fortunately, such an infrastructure stimulus package would be great from almost any perspective, except maybe political. It would save over $200 billion year, lower energy consumption and costs by a fifth, allow more efficient manufacturing to make us more globally competitive, make us able to better endure extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy, create several million jobs and, if structured correctly, would make industry foot half of the bill (Jeffrey Leonard, Washington Monthly).

Such a stimulus would even give us a cleaner environment, as gas is replacing dirtier coal and is most easily integrated with renewable technologies like wind and solar.

Most important, a trillion-dollar stimulus on energy infrastructure would pay for itself in five years. Blackouts, brownouts, blown transformers, downed power lines and other continuous grid problems alone cost America $150 billion each year, and that number is growing. And that’s just the basic transmission and distribution portion of the system. Put in a smart grid while you are doing these upgrades, and the savings double.

The U.S. grid connects over 6,000 power plants to users around the country through more than 350,000 miles of transmission lines, transformers and substations that are mostly past their expected forty-year lifespans (Department of Energy, 2012).

The large power transformers, that control most the power flowing through the grid, are failing at an alarming rate, twice the rate as in 2001, and ten times the rate as in 1980. They take almost two years to replace, weigh up to 400 tons and cost up to $7 million each.

Most of our large power transformers were installed in the United States between the 1950s and 1970s. They have a 40 year life and the number that blow each year is rising dramatically, ten times the rate of 1980, endangering the energy and economic security of the United States. Source: DOE

It’s no wonder we keep trying to patch up the system instead of upgrading. But patching reduces redundancy and flexibility, making small outages domino into regional outages. This vulnerability is more than just dollars, it’s also national security. Our decrepit grid is easily disrupted, intentionally or not.

In 2003, some line failures in northeastern Ohio led to a series of cascading power outages across the United States and Canada that cost $6 billion, killed 100 people, cut off almost 300 power plants and blacked out over 20 million homes and businesses for several days.

The need, the technology and the workforce exist to do this. We need to provide the push, the money and the will, the latter in the form of a strengthened Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that is allowed to regulate all areas of the energy system in concert.

We need about one trillion dollars of investment over the next five to ten years to upgrade our electricity infrastructure of power transformers, substations and transmission lines. Otherwise we cannot take advantage of the energy boom within our grasp as a nation. Source: DOE OEDER

As to a stimulus in general, throughout history they have been very effective in holding off recessions, creating jobs and stimulating economic growth (Christina Romer, New York Times; Richard Wolf, USA Today). This is in contrast to austerity programs that generally fail because they increase unemployment, stifle growth and trigger recessions.

High debt is a long-term problem, while unemployment and growth are short-term problems. An aggressive debt-reduction program coupled with short-term stimulus targeted to infrastructure is the ideal way to address both our current fiscal sluggishness and our future economic strength.

One has only to look at how Europe threw austerity at the Great Recession after 2008 while the United States threw a stimulus at it. Europe’s economy is in shambles and the United States is in the best shape in the world, even with our problems. Even China’s stimulus worked although it was not enough. Many economists and deficit hawks agree that our initial stimulus was useful, but insufficient, and that we need another one (Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney).

If this next stimulus is focused on our energy and power infrastructure, then not only do we stimulate the economy, but we get a new infrastructure that is lasting and can handle our future energy mix effectively, will dramatically reduce energy losses from the old grid, and that pays for itself before this decade is out.